Digital Marketing – SEO, Social Media & Engagement

Bad Twitter Etiquette: Begging Someone to Follow You

Defining the “proper etiquette” for the use of a Social Media tool or online community is very subjective. How you use Twitter may ruffle the feathers of some and how another uses Twitter may ruffle your feathers. I tend to be blasé when it comes to Twitter use by others. I understand there are dozens of ways to leverage Twitter and that there are hundreds of motivations for being on Twitter. However, there is one use that really gets my goat. Begging people to follow you or to follow another account in a Mention is sad.

Is @CrazZyPaparaZz paying @UUUUUUQ to get more followers? Did @CrazZyPaparaZz create a script or is using automated Twitter software to perpetrate the request? I do not know, but would not recommend begging for followers. It really does not create a good first impression.

Worse yet, when I perused the followers of @CrazZyPaparaZz I discovered he is not even following me. Come on @UUUUUUQ! If you are going to beg me to follow @CrazZyPaparaZz at least have @CrazZyPaparaZz follow me first. You will probably get more people to comply with your request.

If you want more Twitter followers then I suggest you create good content worth consuming and that you are active on Twitter posting multiple times daily. Begging is not the way to go.

10 thoughts on “Bad Twitter Etiquette: Begging Someone to Follow You”

The other thing I can’t stand is people begging for an RT for some reason.

“Hey person with more followers than me, can I get an RT for my birthday or because my kid had his first little league game today?
”
Seriously, shut up. Nobody cares. Well ok, somebody cares, but they’re following you already. Unless you’re trying to do some good for the world, spread your news about having icecream to your own circle and leave the rest of us out of it. Don’t beg celebs to tell us. Even coming from somebody we like or respect, you’re still uninteresting.

Glad you’ve mentioned that. In social media, we have Twitter panhandlers. Instead of the often insincere, “will work for food” they tweet, “I beg you, please follow me.” A few, with mutual desperation or pity will follow. Then we have the creepy bribe, “follow me and I’ll you.” This is like a cardboard sign reading, ‘give me something and I won’t go away!’ When I see a stream of similar tweets in their timeline, I report them as spam.

Mmmmm, for the most part I agree, begging is always distasteful and a major turn off. However, there is always a circumstance in which it makes sense. For instance, you may not be a fan of the #FF (Follow Friday) but it did inspire a new community movement or marketing effort, #HF (hirefriday). The idea here is to RT profiles of folks looking for their next job. I participated and it actually had a real purpose and I think it is safe to say for most people it is not annoyance but rather a way for people to connect and RT for a common goal instead of just begging for the sake of it.

Twitter beggars are a 21st century problem. They are different to real beggars in many ways.

If you go to a slum in a third world country, you will see beggars run up to you for spare change, and although an inconvenience, it is their desperate hunger that drives them to such a degrading action.

Twitter beggars are a truly wretched kind. They are so socially retarded that attention seeking via begging for followers is the only means by which they can feed their deep rooted insecurities.

They are not just irritating pests (where there is one Twitter beggar, there will always be a 100 more behind them), but actually so socially damaged that they often cannot function in the real world.

A telltale sign of brain dead Twit is the use of hash tags outside of Twitter.